Gertrude Murphy: There are alternatives to embryos

This is the new age of regenerative medicine, healing through the use of adult stem cells. We do not need to spend money or waste time supporting ethically challenged embryonic stem cells.

Gertrude Murphy

We are being told that human embryonic stem cells are the answer to the prayers of people with serious, incurable diseases and injuries.

We are now being pressured by our state government to spend $1 billion or more to support embryonic stem cell research and the companies who are invested in it. The state Legislature is presently considering a bill to provide $1 billion to build the support system for this research.

Our governor recently appointed to the Public Health Council new people who have already voted to remove restrictions placed on stem cell research by the previous administration. These restrictions included prohibiting some forms of cloning. The Patriot Ledger reported last week that The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center has approved more than $8 million for the University of Massachusetts Medical School to open an embryonic stem cell bank and associated stem cell registry. It will now be possible in Massachusetts to mass produce human embryos by cloning (somatic cell nuclear transfer), using women's eggs and then destroy the embryos to harvest their stem cells after they have grown and developed for 5-9 days.

I support stem cell research but not embryonic stem cell research. The killing of any class of human beings at any stage of their development is not ethical or moral. Embryos are not "fertilized eggs."

Scientifically speaking, once an egg is fertilized, it is no longer an egg but a zygote, the first cell of a new unique human being or an embryo. An embryo is not just growing or multiplying its cells like various tissues in the body. It is growing and developing; just as a newborn is developing into a child and a child is developing into an adolescent and the adolescent is developing into an adult.

Embryonic stem cells have not been successful so far in treating any diseases. In fact, scientists are experiencing formidable difficulties in their attempts to use them. They have a tendency to produce uncontrollable tumors and can also be rejected by the recipient. Happily, we have alternatives to the use of embryonic stem cells. Our future lies with adult stem cells including umbilical cord cells.

Also amniotic fluid and placental stem cells are promising. Bone marrow stem cells transplants have been treating and curing diseases of blood cells for many years (Leukemia, lymphomas etc.) It was previously thought that these cells could not develop into other tissues of the body. But recent developments have shown that (in mice) human bone marrow cells can turn into heart muscle and possibly other tissues.

There is a trial underway at Caritas St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Brighton by Dr. Douglas Losordo and others in which patients with severe heart disease (angina) are being treated with their own marrow cells injected directly into their hearts and the preliminary results are very good. Our country is behind other countries in using adult stem cells. A program on PBS called "Miracle Cell" in 2004 highlighted the exciting
results in Frankfort, Germany of Dr. Andreas Zeiker in healing several persons with serious heart disease through the use of their own marrow cells. A 16-year-old boy with two thirds of his left heart muscle destroyed by a nail gun accident in Michigan has recovered dramatically since his own blood was transfused into his heart.

The same program reported on partial but ongoing improvement of several American spinal cord-injured young adults through use of their own cultured nasal nerve cells in Lisbon, Portugal by Dr. Lima. In Australia, Griffith University Professor Alan MacKay has shown that the same olfactory cells can become heart, brain, nerve, "almost any kind of cell."

Another significant break-through reported by the Associated Press is about finding that amniotic fluid contains immature stem cells that may have the same promise as embryonic stem cells according to Dr. Anthony Atala of Wake Forest University and others at Harvard University. And for older women with urinary incontinence there's a great report from Australia where doctors have used the patients' own skin and muscle cells to repair their bladder problems with significant success.

The list goes on and on. This is the new age of regenerative medicine, healing through the use of adult stem cells. We do not need to spend money or waste time supporting ethically challenged embryonic stem cells.

Dr. Gertrude Murphy is a retired pediatrician and an assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at Tufts University. She lives in Weymouth.